jhowson

Hi all
This forum is awesome. Tons of great stuff. At that,
I've searched through many of the postings (maybe not hard enough, sorry!!), but can't seem to put together a full view of which ipod adapter would make sense for my car. Being Canadian, I have the Canadian model of the '04 TL, which comes with Navigation, but no XM. I've searched, but I could only find posts that reference having the XM option. There were some, but they didn't quite answer my questions.

Anyhow, I have an iPhone 3GS that I want to play through the head unit and charge while listening. For an adapter, I'm looking at either the USA Spec PA15-HON3 (roughly $150 USD) or the BlitzSafe HON / M-LINK1 V.2X (roughly $80 USD). (I was also considering the older USA Spec PA15-HON2, but have the same questions regarding Blitzsafe, see below)

The first thing I wanted was to get the playlists and track titles to display on my navi screen, but basically, as I understand it, with either device, if I don't have XM, I can't do this at all, it'd just be the track numbers displayed on the screen, correct? Can I still advance tracks from the steering wheel controls? Or is all control needing to come from the iPhone?

Secondly - I'd like the unit to charge my iPhone while I'm driving. It didn't appear that the BlitzSafe model did so, which was leaning me towards the newer USA Spec, but then I thought I saw some references to a new/different cable you could get that would provide charging capabilities to the newer iPhones.... is that true? If so, which one? The USA Spec PA15-HON3 comes with iPhone 3GS charging capabilities.

Thirdly, I've read a couple of posts that talk about the PA15-HON3 causing nav units to reboot and head unit radio issues (seemingly limited to the '06 model, but some have noted troubles in the '04 as well). If that's the case, I may just go with Blitzsafe, but wanted to check with the group here.

Also, I've seen some issues with the 4.0 version of the iPhone operating system (I think this was only limited to the iSimple adapter, which I wasn't considering).

Anyhow, the price difference between the options I'm considering is about $70 to $80 online. Not a big deal, but a savings none-the-less and if there's no real difference between them, I may as well save some $$.....

Aside from the two items above, I couldn't find any significant differences in other features and users seemed equally happy with their choices as far as sound quality.

So... should I go with the PA15-HON3, or am I better off just going with the BlitzSafe or maybe the older version of the USA Spec - PA15 HON2 since there is no real difference without the XM feature on my head unit?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

And sorry if this duplicates info in any other thread(s), as I'm sure it must, but it's late and I'm very tired and would really like to find an answer that's based on the Canadian model.... :-)

Thanks
Jamie

anilhanda

I have the same questions as you. I'm looking to do this exact setup in the next month or so.

I was at BestBuy recently and saw this product [Plug and Charge Solution] so I'm also keeping that in mind. I have no clue if my NAVI unit will display the playlists/artists/songtitles etc. So I'm on the fence.

Any advice/pics of their setups anyone can provide would be helpful!

jhowson

I've never seen that product. Will check it out, but was really going to just go with either the USA Spec or Blitzsafe.... heard nothing but good things. I am pretty sure the Nav unit won't display any text beyond "Playlist n Track n" if you don't have XM. I think you need that to display the text of song and playlist names (I think it is tied to RDS or something like that). Anyhow... not many people responding. I'll probably go with the USA Spec...

Mattgtp

I have the neo interface on mine(also a Canadian tl) works well. I cant say how it works with a iphone as I have a blackberry but it works fine with a touch, classic and nano ipod